Is this all because some liberals like EV's? So conservatives feel they have to be knee-jerk and automatically hate them?
I say let the people have their Tesla option when they rent a car. Usually when I rent a car, I'm on business and only driving from the airport to my hotel, then to the office I'm visiting and back again. Maybe I'll stop at local restaurants in the area. Then it's back to the airport to return the rental.
So basically 30-40 miles a day tops when I'm renting a car on business. That is the MAJORITY of car rentals by the way. Your typical car rental does not involve the renter driving hundreds of miles every day. In that minority of cases, the renter would likely choose a gas powered car. But most businessmen will happily choose the Tesla just about every single time. They can plug the car in at the hotel parking lot and have a full charge each morning.
So Hertz is actually making a very smart move here. And I'm sure Tesla is giving Hertz a terrific deal on these 100,000 cars. That's because affluent businessmen will be exposed to Tesla for the first time causing many of them to want to buy a Tesla for themselves when they get home. So Tesla will also come out a big winner.
On a smaller scale, this is how Siriux/XM satellite radio got such a huge subscriber base. Many people's first experience with satellite radio was in aa rental car. Such as myself. I was on business in Atlanta back in the early 2000s and my rental car had Sirius radio (before the merger with XM). I was hooked. Commercial free radio in just about any genre of music? When I got home, I immediately rigged one up in my own car.
Anyway, my prediction is that this will be a huge success.
I’m agnostic on Hertz, Tesla and EVs in general. But looking at the business model from end to end on rental EVs or sales otherwise, there are huge gaps. And the gaps cannot be filled by government subsidy.
Two critical business model inputs are lithium and electricity. Both scarce and challenging.
I agree. Hertz will be buying the lower end Tesla Model 3 with lithium-iron-phosphate batteries; they will last a very long time despite repeated recharging, and Hertz will have resold them before their use is up. Hertz is about a $13 billion cap company, and they'll probably earn $4 billion or more per year extra just on the 100,000 Tesla rental fleet. That's huge. The purchase will be spread out over a year, and Tesla will have no problem supplying Hertz. But Hertz stock now before it takes off.